I’ve heard quite a few times about how Git would be broken if someone found an easy way to create SHA-1 collisions.
A few years ago, after some attacks against SHA-1 were published, Linus explained that the security model of Git doesn’t depend on the hashes being cryptographically secure (although he said that it was a bonus and also mentioned a few possible problems).
There was an interesting thread in the Git mailing list about this topic: Starting to think about sha-256?.
It’s been a month since my last post. As usual, lots of work but also lots of fun. A couple of weeks ago I went to the Igalia Summit, where we discussed about the future of the company, played geocaching, football, tute, …
Here are our guitar heroes Edu and Claudio:
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Besides all of this, I’ve also found a bit of time to play with my tablet. I’ve just ported Fuse, the Free Unix Spectrum Emulator (unrelated to this FUSE, btw) to Maemo.
Fuse is one of the best Spectrum emulators I’ve ever used (definitely my favourite one for Unix), and also one of the few released as free software. It supports all standard models (16K/48K/128K/+2/+2A/+3) and some Russian clones too. It can load most file formats, has good sound support, joystick emulation, … well, better go to the project page to see all features 😉
The port still has a few rough edges, but it’s perfectly functional for everyday use.
Here is a screenshot of Fuse running Head Over Heels on Maemo:
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Fuse is available in Maemo extras. For more information go here.
On another note, Vagalume development is progressing slowly, but there are some news: we have Vagalume packages for Intel MIDs based on RedFlag Midinux. Go here to get them.
It seems that it was yesterday when we started this company, and look at us now (not all Igalians are in the photo, unfortunately) …
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These years have been an amazing experience to us. We’ve tried to do our best in our work and I honestly think that the results haven’t been bad, but I’m sure that the best is yet to come. Thanks to everyone who supported us during all this time.
On another note, we’ve just arrived from Berlin. The city is lovely and while OSiM was good, I have to say that Maemo Summit was really great (look how happy we are in the photo, courtesy of Daniel Gentleman).
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Congratulations to all the people that made it possible, including of course the c-base crew for maintaining such an unique place. I’m looking forward to repeating the experience next year. I’ll try to blog a bit about it soon. But now I need to rest !
Stream your favourite records
In this world of broadband internet access, when we talk about music the concept of owning a record is losing its meaning, as anyone with a decent connection can easily download all the music that they want, but that doesn’t mean much: in the past a guy with hundreds of records at home was certainly a music lover. Nowadays any teenager with a DSL connection can easily have the same amount of songs in a few days or weeks and yet have much less interest in music.
Besides this, an increasing number of artists are uploading their songs to websites such as MySpace, Last.fm, iLike and others. So in many cases you don’t even have to download mp3 files to your computer in order to listen to new records from your favourite artists. You don’t have to own a record to be passionate about it.
If you don’t need to store in your computer your e-mail, your photos, your documents and your videos, does this mean that you don’t need to have your favourite records either? This is not the case right now, and I obviously don’t know what’s the future going to be like, but it certainly seems that things are moving in that direction.
In the case of Last.fm (and outside of the UK, US and Germany, see the previous link) there are lots of records that can be already streamed for free. Such is the case of the great Swedish label Labrador, which have their (almost) complete catalogue available in Last.fm.
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Many other artists ranging from the less popular ones (Tarántula, 6PM, Menomena) to the best sellers (Nine inch nails) can be listened on demand for free. There is a group in Last.fm dedicated to this kind of records. While you won’t see many free albums from mainstream artists, the selection is by no means restricted to unknown amateur bands with no record contract. Many well-known independent artists (those who play in the most popular music festivals and appear regularly on specialised magazines) have free albums available (examples here, here and here, and also the aforementioned Labrador label).
Vagalume 0.7 is out
For all the things explained above, it’s very useful to be able to keep a list of all your favourite music that is available on demand. That’s why the new Vagalume 0.7 introduces a new feature that I had already talked about during Guadec: bookmarks.
With the bookmark manager you can have a list of Last.fm radio URLs (those starting with lastfm://). This includes all of your favourite radios (your best friends’ libraries, your preferred tags, etc.), and also all the free music available in Last.fm. I like to think about it as the equivalent of the music library in Rhythmbox and other programs. To add free albums to your library you just need their lastfm:// address. It used to be available in each album’s page. However after the Last.fm site update it’s no longer there. They are working on it. Meanwhile, there are workarounds (see here and here).
Vagalume’s bookmark manager is still very simple, but I think that it is “good enough” TM to get started and to get the idea. It’ll be improved in future releases.
Another interesting feature in Vagalume 0.7 is that the desktop version has finally D-BUS support. Thanks to the vagalumectl script that is provided with the package, you can now control Vagalume (play, stop, skip, change radios, love tracks, etc.) from a remote host using SSH, for example.
The multimedia keys in some keyboards are supported as well. We have also added Latvian and French translations, and fixed some annoying bugs (activity in our bug tracker is increasing, thank you reporters!).
Last but not least, support for the Moblin platform has been enhanced. We have some binary packages now in case you want to try them out.
Regarding the MS Windows version, it’s still experimental. Vagalume 0.7 for Windows is not ready yet, but we’ll try to release some packages soon.
As usual, go to the Vagalume page for details on how to get it.
Going back to Germany
On another note, I’ll be flying again to Berlin in a couple of weeks, this time for OSiM World and the Maemo Summit. There’s going to be a lot of people there so it’ll be a great opportunity to meet known faces again 🙂
It’s also a good chance to see Vagalume running in a device other than a Nokia Internet Tablet: during OSiM World I’ll be showcasing the Moblin port in one of Intel’s MIDs.
See you in Berlin !
Thanks to the work of Luis Garcia Rio (who has also been working on the OpenMoko port), we have just released Vagalume 0.6 for MS Windows.
In case you’ve never heard about it before, Vagalume is a Last.fm client designed for the Maemo platform. More info here.
Please note that this is an experimental release and doesn’t contain the complete set of features. It might also be more unstable than the GNU/Linux version. We’d like to hear about your problems with this version in the mailing lists.
Vagalume for Windows has been tested on XP and Vista. Here are screenshots of both versions (click to enlarge):
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Installation
To use Vagalume in Windows, you need to install:
Some important notes:
Go here to download Vagalume for Windows. There are two different installers, the full and the minimal installer.
Both will ask you to install GTK+ and GStreamer (just choose no if you have already installed them). The difference is that the full version comes with both packages, while the minimal version will point you to their respective web pages.
To uninstall Vagalume, go to the Windows control panel.
As usual, comments and suggestions are welcome.
Regarding Vagalume 0.7, we’re fixing a couple of bugs that we’ve recently found. It will be out soon.
Update: 23 Jan 2009
Vagalume for Windows can now be found here.
I got back from Istanbul a couple of weeks ago. We had a really great time there, it’s one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen.
After GUADEC me and other Igalians spent some days visiting the city. Back home I enjoyed the Galician sun and beach (including the Cies Islands, which are wonderful) for some days more.
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Regarding the conference, so many things have been said that I don’t think I have much more to add. Congratulations to all the people behind the Gran Canaria bid, I’m sure we’re going to have a great time next year 🙂 (by the way, I uploaded a video of the closing session here and here). Also, if anyone has good quality photos of my Vagalume talk (better than this one) please contact me, thanks !
Getting back to work after holidays is always hard. I’ve got lots of things to do, including some lessons in our Master on Free Software this weekend. So if you have written me an e-mail and haven’t got a reply, please be patient 🙂
I have had no time to release Vagalume 0.7 yet, although the code is mostly ready (I’d like to see how this Last.fm problem evolves, also). However the development never stops. Luis Garcia Rio has been working with OpenMoko and here’s the result:
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Yes, that’s Vagalume running on the Neo 1973. It does work and you can actually play songs.
This is a preliminary version and nothing has been uploaded to the SVN yet, but expect things soon. If you’re interested, join vagalume-devel.
I’ve just got back from Istanbul and when I was about to release Vagalume 0.7 I saw that the Last.fm web page had been redesigned.
However I am missing a very important feature ! Where’s the ability to listen to free records in the Last.fm client ?
When I went to pages like this one there used to be a “Play in Last.fm software” which pointed to this lastfm:// address so I could play the album in my Last.fm client. But I can’t find that link anymore, it seems that the only choice now is to use the flash player.
Has this feature been removed ??
I’ve got a thousand things to do these days so this is going to be a very schematic post 🙂
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See you in Istanbul !!
Vagalume 0.6 is here!
Among the new features introduced in Vagalume 0.6, the coolest one is probably the brand new tray icon for desktop users written by Mario, similar to the one already available for Maemo:
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Other highlights from this version include:
I would like to thank all the contributors, in particular Tim Wegener for his work in the IM status support. And of course all the translators too!
Last but not least, I’d like to remind you again that, as I said in my previous post, I’ll be at LinuxTag 2008 in Berlin with other Maemo hackers. Hope to see you there!
And now, enjoy!
P.S.: I’m moving Vagalume to Maemo extras, so one of these days it should be available there. Stay tuned!
Update: Vagalume 0.6 is now available in Maemo Extras
We’re about to release a new version of Vagalume and this one will be the first with gettext support. So if you want to help to see Vagalume in your language feel free to send me an e-mail, download the latest vagalume.pot file and send me the translation (you can also join the vagalume-devel mailing list).
Note that there are people already working on translations, so if you want to help please have a look at the translations that we already have and ask me before starting.
I’m also glad to announce that I’ll be talking about Vagalume in a couple of conferences:
Hope to see you there! 🙂
